When the last prayer had been said, and they who were going had kissed or shaken hands with those who were staying, and friends and foes had both scattered, Braile said to the young man whom he now faced, “Well, that's the last of him.”
Redfield's jaw was still set from the effort of seeing the affair through in as much decency as he had been able to enforce. “It ain't the last of them. But I reckon, now he's gone, they'll behave themselves. None of the saints that are left will make trouble.”
“No, with Enraghty out of the way and that kind old fool Hingston, with his example of mistaken righteousness, we can get along fairly enough with the old dispensation. Well, Abel,” he called to Reverdy, who was lounging about in the empty space which the crowd had left, unwilling to leave the scene of so much excitement for the dull labors of the field, “you thought you wouldn't go to see the New Jerusalem come down, after all. How's the Good Old Man goin' to work it without you?”
“He's had to work things 'thout me for a good while now, Squire,” Abel returned, not with perfect satisfaction in the part assigned him by the irony of the Squire. “Ever sence that night at Mr. Enraghty's, I been putty much done with him. A god that couldn't help hisself in a little trouble like that, he ain't no god for me.”
“Oh, I remember. But what about Sally? She didn't go with the Little Flock, either?”
“I reckon me 'n' Sally thinks putty much alike about the Little Flock,” Abel said with as much hauteur as a man in his bare feet could command. “We hain't either of us got any use for Little Flocks, any more.”
“Well, I'm glad of it. But I thought she might have come to see them off.”
Abel relented. “Sally ain't very well, this mornin'. Up all night with the toothache.” Redfield had turned from them, and Abel now remarked, “I was wonderin' whether I couldn't borry a little coffee from Mis' Braile for breakfast; I been so took up 'ith all these goun's on that I hain't had no time to go to the store.”
“Why, certainly,” the Squire replied, “and you'd better come and have breakfast with us on the way home. I came down without mine so as to see the Ancient of Days off, and make sure of his going.”
“Pshaw, Squire, it don't seem quite right to have you usin' them old Bible sayun's so common like.”